I won’t talk about March Madness anymore, since we are nearing the start of April. The women’s final will be held Sunday, April 3, at 8 p.m. in case you are interested. The men’s on April 4.
Yet, it seems as though the women’s tournament always takes a backseat to the men’s. It is true of all sports, I think, except for maybe gymnastics.
The first game of basketball was played by men, when, on December 21, 1891, a man named James Naismith introduced the sport. The entire game was based on 13 rules created by Naismith. Thou shall not steal. Oh. Wait. Thou shall steal.
That debut was tested out by 18 students at a school in Springfield, Massachusetts. It went like this. Two teams of nine players each competed. The court sounds crowded to me, a little more like soccer. Oh. Wait. Their entire objective was to throw a soccer ball into a peach basket that had been fixed to a balcony 10 feet above the floor. Woot.
So yes. 1891. It would take two more years before women got their game. That party happened on March 22, 1893, and was played at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The rules were slightly different on that day. In our current games, a bucket yields two points. In the first women’s game, each basket made counted as one point. The game lasted two 15-minute halves.
The teams weren’t from different schools. Instead, a sophomore class team took on a freshmen team. The sophomores won 5-4. Age advantage, I think.
Funny thing on that afternoon. Men were not permitted inside the gym at the all-women college. It didn’t hurt attendance. A rather large crowd of fascinated women stood on the running track at the gym and cheered on their fellow classmates. The prize for winning the competition earned a gold and white banner. Another big woot.
This whole deal was organized by the college’s gymnastics instructor. She was a Lithuanian immigrant named Senda Berenson. Ms. Benson’s rules were adapted from Dr. James Naismith’s rules for men. This was one of the only sports developing the male and female versions of the game on a parallel timeline.
The game got its name honestly. As mentioned. The object of the game was to land a soccer ball into actual baskets — peach baskets — suspended at opposite ends of a court. I’m not sure how they got the balls out after a made shot. Maybe ladders.
Like today, the rules were intended to limit physical contact. Well, that was a bust, literally. A player on the freshmen team dislocated her shoulder at the beginning of the game. Those brutish sophomores had a plan, I think. With that poor young woman on her way to the hospital, the freshman team was a player down for the rest of the game. And they lost.
But. The women’s game grew. Thanks to that good woman, Senda Berenson, the game quickly spread to other women’s colleges throughout the country. The first women’s intercollegiate game, between Stanford and Cal, was played in 1896.
As a note. Berenson died in 1954. She was voted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor in 1985 and was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.
Thanks to her, and so many other female pioneers, women today can play sports, just like the men. While women still take a backseat to their counterparts in the world of athletics, the gap is closing slightly, inch by inch.
And as we know, sports can be games of inches.
==========
“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”
― John Bingham
==========
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
― Phil Jackson
==========
“It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
― Yogi Berra
==========
The round ball. But for girls. Thanks, Senda.
